“We’ve got no intention of cutting and running from Afghanistan,” the Prime Minister said from his holiday home in Hawaii.*
If you’re a keen watcher of political rhetoric, you might recognise that phrase – Bush used to accuse Democrats of wanting to ‘cut and run’ from Iraq.
It’s not just rhetoric, John Key’s foreign policy thinking resembles the worst of the US Right. “We need to suppress their desires to increase global terrorism” he said in reference to the attack on the CIA in Afghanistan and that laughable underwear bomb plot. Like the American Right, Key seems to think that people who participate in these attacks are inherently evil and want to carry out attacks for the hell out it. With the 19th century colonial view still predominant in the US Right, he seems to think you can bash people into submission. He fails to understand that violence begets violence, and that “suppression” always begets resistance.
Maybe John needs to spend less time in the US watching Fox and more in New Zealand thinking about our interests and doing his job.
PS.We only have about 40 embassies worldwide, only two in Africa. So why the hell would we establish one in Kabul, when we have nil relations or trade with Afghanistan? Talk about wasteful government spending. But worse, it looks like the government is willing to put Kiwi diplomats’ lives in serious peril to kiss up to the US.
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